Beginning my project.

To write about what you think you know is hard to do, especially when it involves an alien subject that I've been exposed to for less than a month. As I mentioned on my first post, my intention was to understand this foreign country at the best of my ability and to open my mind while loosing all prejudice and stereotypical characteristics I came to gather before coming here.

At first, my project consisted of comparing feminism in the Brazilian and American culture, but then I became more interested in the subject of religion affecting sexual education in Brazil, considering that Brazil is one of the most HIV/AIDS infected populations, I thought this would be an interesting subject to touch in as well.

I've always found it interesting how religion would sometimes prefer to not educate it's followers on taboo subjects such as sex and give them a false feeling of purity and innocence by keeping them ignorant instead of giving them the knowledge and awareness to make them make responsible decisions that could protect them from sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. To me it seems that Catholicism, Brazil's and Latin America's leading religion, prefers to keep it's followers pure of mind or in silence rather than knowledgeable and speaking of taboo subjects such as sex. And I've always found this to be a real concern for young boys and girls that are trapped in a world were they don't want to commit a sinful act, but naturally their biology is giving them inevitable sexual urges. With no official studies, interviews or detailed observations I do not feel qualified to comment on the way sexual education works here and what they do to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. But what I've noticed is that Brazil's erotic lifestyle is stressed upon human instinct and affection towards the significant other seems to be a need rather than a want, whereas in my culture it is a slower procedure were you don't want to get close to the person until you know what his or her intentions are and the erotic lifestyle is based more upon the object of sex or a sort of reward rather than a need. This being said, Brazil is still one of the countries with the most HIV/AIDS recordings, but then again it has one of the strongest and most effective government prevention and treatment services due to the high recordings.

I still need to research all the aspects that surround the sexual education spectrum. I still need to figure out why it is that the percentage of sexually transmitted diseases are so high here; if it has to do with religion, low sexual education overall; including public and religious education, cultural customs and behaviors making them more instinctively sexual rather than being more cautious and aware of the dangers. Or then again, maybe I am jumping into conclusions... I've only been here more a month after all.